1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to board games, and more particularly, to a board game especially adapted to award players who demonstrate knowledge of increasing levels of difficulty in a predetermined category.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Board games that test players' knowledge are well known in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,807,878 of Tripp discloses a trivia game that employs four spinners. The first spinner determines which player is to ask a question. The second spinner determines a challenging player. The third spinner determines the question category; and the fourth spinner determines the point value and the degree of difficulty.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,856,780 of Begley et al discloses a sports trivia game board which employs five differently colored pairs of tokens. The first token tracks a player's progress around the board. The second token keeps score on a scoreboard section of the board. A plurality of colored cubes corresponding to colored spaces on the board are provided. The colored cubes further have indicia corresponding to the questions on each question card. The question a player must answer is determined by first landing on a colored space, then rolling the correspondingly colored cube.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,907,808 of Turner et al discloses a trivia board game associated with the television program Star Trek. The game provides a plurality of knockdown models representing the Enterprise. Players collect model portions and assemble tehm on their game piece while moving from destination to destination on the game board.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,048,842 of Proctor discloses a trivia game system involving recall of trivia information associated with commercial products, commercial slogans, and personalities of characters associated with these products and slogans. Play of the game involves utilization of a playing board which is divided into individual sectors, with each sector including a movement otrack for a progress marker which identifies the winner of the game.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,793 of Sigle discloses a picture identification game for competitive determination of the identity of the subject matter of a partially exposed picture, such as a photograph of a well known person. When a participant recognizes the identity of the person in the picture, that participant wins the game.
Thus, while the foregoing body of prior art indicates it to be well known to use board games to test players knowledge in a variety of subject areas, no board game appears to reward a player with victory for cumulatively demonstrating knowledge at a number of sequential levels of difficulty. More specifically, no board game disclosed in the prior art cited above rewards a player with the status of a high level of scholarship for having successfully identified figures in pictures at successively increased levels of difficulty. Moreover, no board game disclosed in the prior art cited above elicits knowledge, from a player, about the identity of a figure in a picture, simply by seeing the picture of the figure and having another player read specific information about the figure. The foregoing disadvantages are overcome by the unique educational board game of the present invention as will be made apparent from the following description thereof. Other advantages of the present invention over the prior art also will be rendered evident.